1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to video processing, and, in particular, to computer-implemented processes, apparatuses, and systems for compressing and decompressing video signals for applications with limited transmission, storage, and/or processing capacities.
2. Description of the Invention
It is desirable to provide real-time video conferencing over a conferencing network in which each node in the network is a personal computer (PC) system. Each PC-based node transmits and receives video signals with each other PC-based node over a communications link. Conventional communications links include, but are not limited to, a local area network (LAN) or an integrated services digital network (ISDN) line.
Conventional communications links have finite transmission bandwidth. In order to provide video conferencing of sufficient quality, it is desirable to apply compression processing to the video signals to reduce the amount of information used to represent each frame of the video stream for transmission. Decompression processing is then applied by the receiving node to reconstruct each video frame for display.
In addition, conventional PC-based conferencing systems have finite processing bandwidth in which to implement the video compression and decompression processes. It is therefore further desirable to provide video compression and decompression processes that may be implemented in real time on PC-based conferencing systems to provide video conferencing of sufficient quality.
It is accordingly an object of this invention to provide computer-based processes, apparatuses, and systems for performing video compression and decompression processing to provide real-time video conferencing of sufficient quality over a video conferencing network comprising nodes of finite processing bandwidth and communications links of finite transmission bandwidth.
Further objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the detailed description of a preferred embodiment which follows.